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I finally received all if the fullsize images from Updates 2 thru 10 and they are now on this page. The difference between what was here originally and what is here now is the difference between night and day. I can’t encourage you enough to go back and look all all of them. — Blogmaster

BentProp Supporters Update #21 Friday, March 13, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-21

13 March

And then there was still one.

I definitely feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I went to the airport as I said I would and was able to meet with the ops agent who does the weight and balance for the airplane. I asked Taj how he felt about the Yap to Guam leg. He said it looked really good.

Every airplane and runway combination has a maximum weight it can take off with. If you are overweight, you have to take off some payload so as not to violate the weight. [... and the trees/buildings off the end of the runway. — Blogmaster] Sometimes the crew is able to burn fuel to get back within limits and sometimes us standby people are taken off at the gate. You cannot predict what the solution will be. And since I cannot afford to get stuck in Yap, this is good news.

I processed out of the country, again. Everyone seems to know my name or at least my face. I had brought frozen Oreo cookies as my gesture of goodwill so I was feeling pretty good.

Then the gate agent said there was a chance of being bumped in Yap.

Not feeling so chipper anymore.

When I boarded, I went to the cockpit to chat with the Captain. I told him my dilemma and he made some calls. The ops agent called Yap, found out their payload numbers and proudly told the Captain we would be 281 pounds overweight.

The problem in Yap is that they only have air service three times a week: tonight, Sunday and Wednesday. The Sunday flight is already oversold so going standby is not an option. Buying a ticket might not work either as at some point every company stops selling tickets on full flights. If I cannot get out tonight, it’s likely I would not get out until next Wednesday.

Well, since I know I have a boarding priority level lower then dead fish, I did not feel too confident. I could be a very easy solution to a load problem. Although getting stuck in Yap for a few days would be fun, I could see manta rays, stone money and take in all that this island has to offer, if I cannot buy a seat out of Yap, I would not be where I want to be: with Rebecca at home.

So, better part of valor, I walked off the flight. I immediately went to the ticket counter and bought a ticket. I got a better deal at the airport than I was quoted in the city ticket office. They also listed me for the flight from Guam to Tokyo. I’m not really worried about the legs after I get to Guam. NWA flies out of Guam late in the afternoon so if I cannot get on Continental, I’ll fly us. If I can get on Continental, I get home the same day and that is my preference.

I went back to the hotel. Again.

They were glad to see me but I think they were laughing way too much. I got my room back, hooked up the DSL, chatted with Rebecca and went to bed. Again, at about 0300 in the morning. But I did sleep until 8 a.m.!

I had arranged some fun things to do during the day and Rebecca reminded me that I should really package up Joe, Esther and Doyle’s present to me and mail it back. I had meant to do that each day I got bumped but for some reason my brain is not working quite as well as it should.

At 0900 I went for a sightseeing ride in Matt’s helicopter.

Then to the Post Office. Then a nap. Then kayaking. Then another nap. Returned the van to Muj. Out for sunset. Dinner. Another nap. And at midnight I was taken to the airport.

Last night the ticket agent had already; checked me in, gave me a seat, listed me for the Tokyo flight and overall took great care of me. As I went through the airport, every agent told me that I would have made it the night before. Drat. And they also liked my great positive attitude.

I am now processed out of the country, sitting in the departure lounge and waiting for the flight to arrive from Manila. That will be our airplane out to Guam. If for some reason I am still in Palau tomorrow, the gods are trying to tell me something. I just hope I can figure it out before too much time elapses.

So standby. Something good is coming.

And then there were none!

I am home. Everything went so smooth after leaving Palau. I had an hour in Guam, 5 in Narita and a pleasant ride back to Detroit. I thought I had gotten sunburned while kayaking the other day as I was tingling in my extremities and my neck was a little stiff. Turns out I had a fever, sweated and trembled all the way back to Detroit and I hoped they did not have the temperature scanners in operation anymore.

I think my sleep disruption during the last few days weakened my system and I picked up a bug. Hopefully it’s not dengue fever!

Rebecca managed my return beautifully. I was ordered to stay away from the Reply/Reply-All buttons in my e-mail program, stay away from the Quicken checkbook and I was not given any sharp implements to use at dinner. [This is when you have to question Northwest’s flight-crew hiring standards... — Blogmaster] I took a short nap prior to dinner, had two cups of really strong coffee after dinner and then, when I was ready for bed, no amount of coffee would keep me awake.

For the first time in a month, I slept a normal night’s sleep. One more night like that and I may actually be close to the right time zone.

I sent off my report of the last fews days effort to Pat for his official records. We’ve already started planning for next year’s mission, P-MAN XII. And, yes, there may be a P-MAN XI.V this summer.

Now you’re up to date. Let me add some photos for your pleasure and then I will be done for another year.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about our work in Palau. That really is why I am writing, to let you know about U.S. Servicemen lost, and then found. And all of the work that goes into that endeavor.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #20 Wednesday, March 10, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-20

10 March

Some photos from that night.

11 March

And then there were two. Katie and Paul left at 0110 in the morning. Now it’s just Molly and me. There are two important things to do, some almost as important things to do and some housekeeping things to do. Plus we decided that The Taj would be our place for a last dinner in Palau.

Since I missed the departure last night, I got a pretty good night’s rest. Still up at 0530 though. Worked on e-mail and an update, some photos and planned some of the stuff to do today.

Molly was up almost as early e-mailing from her room and finally appeared for coffee and one more team breakfast. Then we got it together and headed on out. First stop, the Post Office. No one in line and my 69 pounds 11.4 ounces started its journey home. [So will it get home or wind up in Fargo with Rick’s gear? Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of “The Lost Luggage of Doctor Samsonite” another Hardy Boys mystery. — Blogmaster]

Then to the the Continental office to check on the flight status for the night. Martha said no problem. Things are looking good.

Then we went shopping for those important people in our lives so I will not come home empty handed. I got a haircut and foot massage while Molly had a pedicure. Said goodbye to various governmental and commercial folks who have helped us out and made reservations for hotels and rental cars for next year. Also have a system set up so the Internet will be working the day we arrive in our hotel room. You can count on that!

Packed, last e-mails out, stripped the DSL gear and put it at the front desk as well as a box with all the stuff for Jolie. Headed on out to The Taj and Robert once again gave us a grand meal.

We arranged to take our loaner van to the airport so just in case I did not get out, I would still have wheels. Up to the airport and we were first in line for the ticket counter. In this part of the world, the order you check in is the order you are boarded in your category of standby travel. Reid likes to think it is free travel but sometimes discounted travel is the most expensive kind.

Molly had two bags with her; 38 pounds and 59 pounds. The limit is 50 pounds per bag. She tried every which way to balance the bags and got it to within 5 pounds. Close enough for government work.

We breezed through checkin and they let us go to the gate. In the past they kept me at the ticket counter until the last minute. So this is a good sign. It’s also a good sign that with all of the strap hangers (freeloading employees) there would still be a few empty seats.

They started the boarding process, called all the rows, boarded three non-rev folks and stopped the process. Then they started talking about refunds of the departure tax and tomorrow’s flight. Yet the flight is not full. It’s 0245 when they say no more employees are getting on because they are weight restricted. Seems they put on 40 boxes of frozen tuna for market. So now I know my boarding priority is less than a dead fish. I did not budge until the aircraft actually pushed back. You just never know when the crew is going to say, “Bring one more on.”

We go back through immigration, we’re let back into the country and now it’s way late. But I have a van! And I have a room! We paid the monthly rate and only stayed three weeks. I can stay another week and not shell out a penny. I got back to the room, called Rebecca, told her the wonderful news, punched out a few e-mails and went to sleep at 0400. I had been up 22 hours and 30 minutes. Well, at least I would sleep past 0530.

12 March

And then there was one. I’m it for in-country P-MAN XI folks.

At 0730 I was up and there are two things that are getting me down. First, I have to go through this all over again tonight. Second, we already gave our coffee grinder to Jolie. I have a great bag of Starbucks in the freezer and can only pound the beans into submission. I do have a ton of frozen Oreos, but that is not what I need under the circumstances. I think I’ll use those as a bribe tonight. An ugly word, but it might just work.

Had another team breakfast and went to visit Matt. I wanted to ask about the contacts he said I should talk to and since I was still here, I might as well do it now. He offered a ride in the helicopter as he had to go get fuel. Right time. Right place.

Had a lovely sightseeing ride and realized that of the active Palauan licensed pilots, 2/3s were in his helicopter at the same time.

We agreed to meet for sunset and I went about my errands. Most importantly, real coffee from Abai Coffee. Then Continental. And they did not have good news for me. Tonight’s flight goes to Guam via Yap. Just like I did coming to Palau this year. And I can get to Yap from Palau. Yeah! But there is a really good chance I won’t get off of Yap. No worries. I’ll just stay a few days and explore a new island and take the Sunday flight to Guam. Yap only has service 3 days a week. That would still give me time back at home to get adjusted before I have to go back to work and sit in the front of the bus.

The Sunday Yap departure is oversold. That plan won’t work. So I will go to the airport in just a few hours, check in and get the operations agents to tell me how risky it is. If it’s risky at all, I’ll stay and buy a ticket to get to Guam the next day. I could try to fly on Continental to Manila and then get on NWA but I don’t have a coupon that says Manila. Maybe they’ll take pity on me. One way or the other, I’ll make something happen.

The bad part is not knowing keeps me from scuba diving. You need to be out of the water for a long period of time [24 hours from your last dive. — Blogmaster] and finishing your diving the numerical day prior to these early a.m. flights just doesn’t work out.

However, if I don’t get out again, I’m either going fishing with Joe, or kayaking.

Had sunset at Sam’s with Matt, Scott, Joe, Esther, Quint and all the Sam’s regulars.

So that’s my tale so far. It’s almost 8 p.m. in Palau and the ticket counter opens at 10 p.m. I’ll have more to tell, there’s no doubt about that.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #19 Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-19

10 March

A fun day!! I got to play in the water and see beautiful fishes. For Paul, Molly and Katie, they had a work day, of sorts.

Yesterday we scheduled a 0900 helicopter mission for them with Matt. They were going to look for more pieces of the Wildcat, look at the jungle in Ngiwal and on the reef for a Navy airplane and its flyer, and look up in the hills above Ngatpang Bay to get the lay of the land for a Corsair search.

The feedback I got was that they did not see any more Wildcat parts. A lot of that area has been hiked and civilization is encroaching. Or the parts are just hiding under the brush. We’ll probably go back with a metal detector next year and see what we find.

Up in Ngiwal, they did indeed look at jungle and out on the reef. Nothing found there either.

However, up in the hills, the mission was a little different. We have been frustrated with a couple of Graves Registration Unit latitude/longitude positions. According to the reports, these lat/longs should contain airplanes and/or graves. And we haven’t found a thing there. One case is of a Marine Lieutenant who was driving a Corsair. We went to the point and did not find a thing after days of searching. I did lose my GPS out there and Grover lost a bunch of things. So that means the airplane is out there.

This year, we found a different chart with a different datum point for lat/long measurements. It puts the reported point a bit to the northwest of where we have been looking. And it puts it into really ugly hills and jungle. The airborne crew tried to get the feel of it by overflying the area. They think they have some good reference points in which to base a search next year.

Then they came back to town to accomplish stuff. The Post Office had shut down due to a power failure so they could not do that. They could not go to the museums because they’d lost power too. So Molly took her Nitrox test (passed, of course) and Katie did more errands. Paul pondered the puzzles that have been uncovered here in Palau setting us up for success next year.

I finally got my fish day. I was supposed to get one at the beginning of all this but I did logistics work instead. So, in no particular order, let me show you what I saw, including Jelly Fish Lake and maybe an earlier dive as well:

Optical illusion with the coin. This Moon Jelly Fish (I think that is the name of it.) is 10 feet below me.

After my fun day, I met Paul at Sam’s and we headed to Neco to catch up with the ladies. We all got together and went back to the casa where Margie met us with her world famous margaritas. She even left us some for the next day. Then we had one more dinner at Kramer’s.

This is the night that Paul and Katie left us. They had the 0110 flight on the 11th. I was working on an update when I decided to close my eyes for just a few minutes. Paul said he tried to wake me but to no avail. When I did rise, around midnight, there was a note and they were gone. And then there were two.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #18 Monday, March 9, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-18

09 March

And then there were four. Pat departed Palau last night. Now it’s Katie, Molly, Paul and me. Our job is to close out Palau for this year and set the stage for the next mission. We did one of the most rewarding things we can do in Palau: interview elders. But first we had some stops to make.

We left the hotel, dropped off laundry and turned left. We visited with Matt and Madrei. He’s the Australian helicopter pilot flying and living in Palau. He’s helped us in the past with spotting and logistics rides. He and the owner of the helicopter, John Walker, offered another hour of flying to help us out this year. We wanted to set that up for the next day. We sat and chatted with him a bit and he told us of a friend of his who swears there is an airplane up beyond German Lighthouse. This is the place we went to with Roddy a few times and never even found a rivet. However, Melvin is a new player to us and Matt is convinced that his word is gold. That’s good enough for us, but not until next year.

We picked up Joe and headed up north. But first we needed to make a stop for Paul. He wanted to get an accurate GPS waypoint at a USGS Control Point so that we can really navigate down to just a few meters of error. He said you do that by placing your GPS unit on the point, a metal disc that is embedded on a hard object that doesn’t move, and letting it sit unmolested for 10 minutes and then taking the waypoint. And there is a disc in Ngatpang and we have directions on how to get there.

We went north, turned right at the big banyon tree and drove in 100 meters. Turned left, up some terraces and then find the highest point and there it is. We did just that and all we found was a hilltop of tall thick jungle grass. We kicked, we pulled, we macheteed and we almost burned the flora to the ground. But we never found the disk. Fear not. There is another one on the dock at Ngaremlingui. I asked Joe and he said it would only put us behind by 30 minutes or so. So off we went.


En route we passed by the village of our old friend Lazerus. I asked Joe if he was still in good health and still fishing. Joe said he was and when we got to the dock, there was Lazerus in all his betel nut chewing glory. Same impish smile as always. As we chatted, Paul got his point and then we were off.

We headed to Joe’s home area way up north. Ngarchelong is the northern most state on Babelthuap. The next state north is an atoll named Kayangel.

Joe knows an elder who was working for the Japanese during the war. He was a laborer carrying concrete and rice for the Japanese Army. He told us about his time during the war and after and we learned more about the hardships the Palauans endured. Although he had heard stories of planes being shot down and prisoners being executed, he himself had never witnessed anything. And the stories he heard we had already heard before. However, he is another source pointing to Ngatpang as the execution site of the POWs and missionaries.

He said we should chat with his wife. So Katie and Molly decided to have some girl bonding time and went off to conduct the interview without the menfolk. Might get a different perspective that way. They conducted the interview and I have no idea what transpired except that the elder lady did not want her photo taken because her hair was a mess. The world over, it’s all the same. Now Molly is sitting next to me at the airport reading over my shoulder and trying to tell me things about the interview. It’s too late. Should have told me yesterday. I’ll have to read Mollly’s update to see what happened. And now she tells me she did not elaborate in the update. The world over.....

The elder then suggested we chat with another elder just a few houses down the road. Turns out he was 2 years old when the war ended. So he could only chat about the stories his father and brothers told him over the years. Unfortunately, they have already passed away so we don’t have any firsthand accounts from this family. But he did suggest some folks we should chat with and an interesting story he told is that his first name is Japanese but his family is all Palauan. Seems his father’s best friend was Japanese and even the war did not interfere with that relationship. So he named his son after the best friend.

Then Joe suggested we talk with his Uncle who lived in the area. JOE! You’ve been holding out on us. Seems his uncle, a retired teacher, had similar experiences as the other elders from this area of Palau. Prior to the bombing starting, the Palauans were still farming and fishing as well as being made to work for the Japanese. And most Palauans were still in their home areas. After the war came to Palau there were forced moves to the center of Babelthuap, food was scarce and the Japanese became more brutal. Life was hard for these people as they also had to avoid our bombs coming down. Palauans moved into the jungles and hid in caves during the daytime. At night, they would forage for food as best they could.

Done with the interviews, we headed to the Stone Monoliths for lunch. This is an ancient Palauan artifact site and there is a pretty picnic area above it. And you cannot beat the view.


After lunch we headed down the road to Ngiwal. This is where Paul tracked down what he believes is a burial site for a Naval Aviator. Based on an elder’s recollections during the war, if you travel the old road to just beyond the Compact Road, turn into the jungle and just north of an old tree is the burial spot. Well, Paul did find a depression in the ground that does look like an old burial spot and there were no other spots like that in the area. So, it may be, or it may not be one of our MIAs. We’ll hand this data over to the official government searchers and let them decide.

Back to town, got cleaned up and Dave and Margie came over to make the last Bob’s Special for Molly. This is a special drink named after a teammate who died after the 2007 mission. I say it is the last because the secret ingredient, Bohemia Beer, is not available in Palau without a special order and Dave and Margie just poured the last of their stash for Molly. Joe and Esther came around and we all went across the lot for dinner at The Palm Bistro.

And that was our March 9th. Now on to the 10th which was full of fun and excitement. But you’ll have to wait until I get back from the Continental Airlines office in Koror.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #17 Sunday, March 8, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-17

08 March

Oops! I got behind again. I’ll get caught up eventually.

Today was pancake day! Blueberry pancake day! And we had guests! Dave and Margie, Suza (expat American who lives on a boat with her hubby. They started sailing many years ago and were just going for a few years. They’re still out here going from tropical island paradise to tropical island paradise. We chatted up a storm and then kicked our guests out and got down to business.

Today was a scrub day again. We went over every airframe that was lost in the war in Palau and made some decisions about research directions for each case. We also looked at the cases in name order to see what more we need in order to find certain folks. For each airframe that was lost in searchable Palau (anything in deep water is beyond our abilities so there is no need to expend any effort), we logged whether or not we need more information or the disposition of the airframe according to the summary records. In some cases there may not have been an MIA associated with a crash but the airframe might be in an area where there is a MIA. We would want to know that in case we ever stumble upon that airframe. Wouldn’t want any false positives.

I thought it would take most of the day but we zipped right through it. We were done by noon. We had an invite from the CAT team to go to their compound for a mid-deployment party. They said there would be lots of food and lots of cold frosties. But en route we went to look at some airplane parts that were found near the airport. We were just going to take 5 minutes. And you know what that means with this group.

Joe lead us to the parts on the side of a hill. Houses are starting to invade this area so it is important to sweep the hill for more debris. We found the parts laying on the surface and just needed to do a little dusting to take some pictures. If we were lucky, we hoped to find a vertical stabilizer with a serial number on it. As it turned out, we found the horizontal stabilizers and the first few feet of the outer wing panel of the port wing. They are FM2 Wildcat parts and there is a FM2 just about a quarter mile away. And there are no other Wildcats down in the area. So we have a pretty good idea of who belongs to these parts. And of course it took more than 5 minutes and of course standing in the hot sun dusting old crashed parts turned our party clothes into work clothes.

Then we arrived at the CAT team compound. Their pub was open and they had more food than a whole village could consume. The BBQed whole pig was excellent as well as all of the dishes from all around the pacific rim. Some of our folks tossed horseshoes. Some went on a short cave expedition. Some pointed out to the CAT team members how close the Wildcat is to their compound. All of us had a grand time. I ate almost as much as I did at Joe and Esther’s!

Then we went back to the casa as Pat had to pack and depart. This was an odd feeling for me. Most of the time I’m the one leaving early. This mission it was Pat’s turn. Duty called back at his mothership. We milled about smartly until it was time to take him to the airport. Dropped him off and headed home. A few of us wanted a Bem Ermii milkshake so we took those that didn’t home and returned for a frozen treat.

So ended another day for The BentProp team. For the next couple of days we’ll be closing up loose ends and setting the stage for next year’s mission or this year’s mid-mission. Tomorrow will be an interview day. The 10th will be a scuba day for me as I need to see fish. What the other folks do won’t concern me as I will be gently floating along the currents seeing tropical colors and being totally relaxed in the ocean realms. That is until a big mojammer shark gets too close. But that is a fish tale that is a few days away.

Blue Skies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #16 Saturday, March 7, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-16

7 March

Hello Everyone!

I think this e-mail catches you up til today. And tonight, I’ll write about today. But first, yesterday.

And then there were five. We lost Rick last night. He had the 0500 flight to Taiwan, then he sits for 15 hours and then off to Seattle. En route here, he hung at the airport for a similarly long sit. I think he’s going touring this time.

We did split ops again. This time Paul had a hankering to go up and poke around the jungle by himself, and chat with Jolie about surveying stuff and about body decomposition in the soil in Palau. Very different on than in the rest of Palau. Babelthuap has very acidic soil so bones degrade rapidly. She thinks we’ll never find bones in a grave site. Our only hope is that if we ever are allowed to look into a suspect area, we find metal that will last in the soil. And we are a long way from ever being allowed to do that.

But he got some time alone, in which he does his best thinking, to ponder what we have to do to locate these men who are still on Babelthuap.

The rest of us headed to Aimelik by boat. We had a contact who said there is airplane wreckage scattered all over the shallows on the southern coastline between the power plant and the point. There is an Avenger down somewhere in that area as we have found a wing from one but we haven’t found anything else. So we looked and looked. From the boat, dragging in the water and with SSS. (Gluttons for punishment but it seemed to return a better picture today. Maybe tightening that one Allen screw really does make a difference.)

We never found anything identifiable but we did talk to a local fisherman who was out with his wife and child, polling on his bamboo raft. He said he fishes here all the time and has never seen a thing. And with a mask, snorkel and flippers, he probably has seen a lot of the bottom.

However, we did get a SSS hit on something with parallel straight lines that was laying on a sandy bottom. We logged it and will probably drop down on it next year.

Then we went to visit Nargol. This is the area Dennis showed us with a wing in a lagoon. We have since found a few parts laying on the rock island to the west of the lagoon. We got some SSS hits with the Navy east of the lagoon. We wanted to show Katie and Molly one of our target areas for next year. Some of the lagoon is deep so we do want to create a plan rather than just drop in.




And that was the end of our work day. Katie went to do a little shopping for the team while the rest of us ate and drank at The Drop Off. Then we went and got cleaned up. Tonight is banquet night at Joe and Esther’s.

For the past few years, Joe and Esther have invited us into their home for a Palauan feast. I love and dread this each year. Love it because it is so good. Dread because I put on way too many pounds. [He only cares because he’ll be charged for extra baggage when he flys home. — Blogmaster]

As usual, the feast was magnificent. We had cold coconut milk fresh from the nut, grouper sashimi, crab and taro leaf soup, tapioca and land crab crab in a crab shell, clam with onion and garlic, whole mangrove crab, steamed grouper with taro, coconut ball and tapioca cannoli for dessert. I wobbled out to the car.

Joe and Esther have been great friends to The BentProp Project for many, many years. When they say we are family, they mean it. And if it wasn’t for the Maldangesang family, we would not be as successful as we are.

Back to the casa and I plopped into bed. I needed to get a good rest as we were having guests for breakfast the next day. The next day is blueberry pancake day! So stay tuned.


Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #15 Friday, March 6, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-15

6 March

We lost Wil this morning. Not in the jungle mind you, just back to the real world for him. Our merry troop is down to 6. At least we can all fit into one van. So we turned in the rental.

Our split ops continued on today with Rick, Molly and myself on the boat and Pat, Paul and Katie back out in the jungle. The land folks took some government folks back up to Ngatpang to show them our areas of interest for the POWs. They looked around a bit and covered some terrain we looked at in years past. Then they went to the bridge at Bem Ermii and had lunch with Jolie.

After lunch they went to the jungle areas that the Ngiwal elder told them to look in for the buried Navy flyer. They found no smoking guns but Jolie did tell them that due to the acidic levels in the soil, there would be no bones at all. Maybe some white stuff with the consistency of Oreo cookie filling and maybe not even that. So the conundrum is if you look and don’t find anything, then what do you do next. If you don’t look, you will never find an answer.

They mucked around a bit and met up with the water ops people closer to sunset at The Drop Off.

We on the water side did some more SSS work. We went to the hardware store the day prior and picked up pieces parts to make a better mounting bracket for our side scanning sonar. We thought if we could make a better mount (currently using a block of wood and duct tape) we’d get better imagery. We put it all together and it worked fairly well. For a while. Then some of the metal pieces bent and we were worse off than with our block of wood. We still had the duct tape, some rope and some cable ties so we were able to put the stability back in. The thought was good but the engineering wasn’t.




We went to a known aircraft crash site and on the first two passes we had great returns. we were excited. Then we saw nothing. We went around that airplane a dozen times without even seeing a rivet. We fiddled around, changed settings, rebooted, all to no avail. It didn’t dawn on us that maybe something simpler was going on. As it turned out, and after we had thrown in the towel for the day, we discovered one or two Allen screws were loose, causing the transducer head (that’s the business end of the sonar) to bobble in the water. That caused our returns to be less than optimal. In a nutshell, we suck at this. And frustration takes its toll in different ways with different people:



So, if the main mission isn’t working out, a highly trained team always has a backup plan: a fun dive. We already had the gear on board, no one wanted to run the SSS anymore and Palau does have one or two good dive sites. It was late in the day so Joe took us to a wreck we had never been to before. She was a Japanese freighter sunk during the war. This was a much better dive than the Helmet wreck. The ship is bigger with more areas to swim into including the pilot house, ladder wells, weather decks and holds.

However, when I splashed in, my dive light took a different path to the ship than I did. I didn’t figure that out until I got to the ship without my dive light. I showed my empty brass clip to Rick and he thought I had found it, rather than seeing something was missing. [You can’t prove, or show, a negative. — Blogmaster]

We completed the dive a bit early as Joe asked us to come up with a little extra air in the tank. Now we had a choice. Rick’s scuba gear still hasn’t shown up. And he only has one more day in Palau. He thought he should check the post office one more time. He also wanted to bounce down onto the wreck to see if my light dropped straight down. It was ten after three and the Post Office closed at 4 pm. The question was which low probability task should we do since we could only do one with the amount of time left until 4. I thought we should leave the light and Rick wanted to bounce down on it. Then Charlie, our boat driver, told us that we had until 4:30 pm until the Post Office closed. That settled it. We could do two low probability items.

After a decent interval on the surface, we planned a 12 minute dive at 115 feet. Down we went, as fast as we could. Did a quick search pattern on the sandy bottom with the hull of the ship as one side of our search square. After a couple of laps, we popped up onto the deck of the ship and with two minutes left in our dive, rather than go down into the hold, I consigned my light to Davy Jones’ locker and we went up. A good safety stop at 15 feet and then we were on the boat racing to Neco Marine. Molly and I cleaned up the boat and moved our gear while Rick raced to the Post Office.

Rick came back empty handed. His stuff still has not gotten here. It may really be lost. This has never happened to us before. All of our stuff has always arrived on time. Might be a little tardy getting back home but it always arrives in Palau. I’ll check for his stuff when I go the the Post Office to ship my stuff home.

We all got together and debriefed the day’s events. We find that these debriefs are even more important now that we do split ops. Not only does the individual team get to review what they have done but each team gets to clue the other into what is going on in their arena. As we do swap folks between teams, this is important so that someone does not feel lost when doing this team shift.

Out to dinner at Teppen Tai, a multi-national, far east Asia restaurant. Tried a new kind of rice wine that was very, very good.

Back home, got some updates out and then to bed. I am about a day behind now for getting the news to you. Hopefully, I’ll get caught up on Sunday. But until then, have a great weekend.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #14 Thursday, March 5, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-14

5 March

Hello Everyone!

Today we were a single group. Our goal was sleep in (to at least 0530 would be nice for me), have breakfast, go out and re-interview the Ngiwal elder and possibly hike the forest based on his story. Then head north and find more elders whom we haven’t spoken with.

Also, my goal was to get you some photos. I have been a little remiss and I aim to rectify that. Hopefully, I have. I just transferred the photos into my computer and will review them shortly.

Our group is down to seven folks now that Mark and Warren have left. We still need two vans to move our group around. Wil leaves tonight but is heading out with us for one final day. He was a smart man and took his off day for shopping a few days ago. Tomorrow, we’ll turn in the rental van and be down to one set of wheels for the remainder of the trip.

We headed north along the Compact Road, it is still amazing not to see construction crews. We passed the Capitol building and got to the beautiful coastal village of Ngiwal. Through the school parking lot, down the parallel side road and into the Chief’s drive.

He was happy to see us all again and happy to chat with us. This became one of the longest interviews we’ve ever done. He dredged up more memories than in the previous interviews: a story about a plane shot down outside the reef, a Navy flyer buried along the road, and stories of Japanese records and ammunition storage sites in the jungle.

When he was done talking, he led us to where he thinks we will find “bones” in the forest. He didn’t leave the van as he is too old to hike the jungle anymore but he did point. At one of his stops, Paul jumped out, went 50 yards up the old road, turned left into the jungle and found a depression. Might be nothing. But how did Paul turn left into the jungle and find that depression so fast. We will have to revisit this place.

We went to a few more places that the elder pointed out to us and then dropped him off at home. We had lunch from the local store which consisted of microwaved hotdogs, Sunchips and Pringles. [Oh boy!  Health food. — Blogmaster]









Then we headed up north to visit with another elder. Although the war years were tough on his family, he was not subjected to a forced evacuation as so many other Palauans were. He worked as a laborer for the Japanese hauling concrete and building lighthouses. After the war he became a teacher and also developed a wood carving business. Now he has a helper who he has taught how to carve. He gave us interesting stories about his time during the war but no real leads for what we are doing out here.

Back home, cleaned up and went out to dinner. A new tradition has been established at BentProp. The person who is leaving that night gets to choose where the group eats and doesn’t have to chip in for it. We close their account earlier in the day as far as group expenses go. Wil chose Carp Restaurant as he wanted fruit bat soup. He spoke about it all day long. However, as the time drew near, he, how shall I say this, demurred. When we told him he did not have to eat fruit bat soup and no one would think the less of him, he was happy again with Carp.

Katie did order the fruit bat soup and we all had some. Wil, still protesting, ate the brain ... and loved it. Tasted some of the meat and loved it. Looked at the furry skin and said “Absolutley no way!”

Esther joined us for dinner with her son Doyle. Doyle loves fruit bat soup and put us all to shame. I broke down and had some as well. For the first time ever. I only had a small piece, but it was challenging. I had the tongue. Hmmmmm good.

Meanwhile I am actually still waiting for my main course. Everyone heard me order Tonkatsu (pork cutlet dish) and it never arrived. Even after we reminded the waitron. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

And that was our fun-filled night. Tomorrow will be another split ops day. Some of us on the boat and others in the jungle. We will turn in the rental van, get some more groceries and start winding down our grand adventure out here. For once, I’ll be the last to leave so I will be able to report on the conclusion of P-MAN XI.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #13 Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-13

04 March

We had another split ops day. Rick took me, Katie and Molly out on the water to work with the Side Scanning Sonar. We did great with the Navy with us but now that we’re on our own, we suck. But SSS is a tool that we can employ and we should learn how to use it. Therefore we were going to go out and take readings on known airplane sites. Stuff we should not be able to miss.

We missed them all. We went to the Jenkins Avenger wreck which is tucked up against an island. Zilch. We went to a Japanese Zero that is in 60 feet of water on a sandy bottom. As soon as you stick your head in the water, you can see the wreck. But on sonar, we could not. Then out to the B-24 which is a much larger wreck. Nope. Then the Japanese Jake (floatplane) which is sitting upright, fairly intact with a buoy anchored near it. Absolutely nothing. We suck at this. [Keep in mind he flys airliners for a living... — Blogmaster]

On the boat we talked about all the variables that could be affecting us: angle of the transducer head, stability of the mounting system, wave action, operator lack of skill, etc., etc. We devised a plan for a better mounting system, decided to watch the weather conditions better and go back out to calibrate our eyeballs to airplane wreckage.

However, when we got back to the casa, we found a couple of nuts missing from the locking system of the sonar head. Seems that our transducer was flopping around like a fish on the deck of a boat. While we were on the water, we found two nuts on the boat and handed them to Joe since none of us could recognize them. [D’oh!. — Blogmaster]

We have our mounting system, the missing nuts, more duct tape, cable ties, new firmware and new software for the Hummingbird [SSS] system. We’ve upped the frequency the unit works at, which should be better for detecting aircraft with lots of flat surfaces. In two days, we’ll head back out and try again. At least we’re learning what not to do with an SSS unit. We’re also getting the idea of how to deploy it better next year.

While we were out on the water, Wil was taking a day to himself to do more research for his book by taking in all of the museums in Palau. He had a ball and learned a lot.

Pat and Paul made a courtesy call on the Chief of Staff of the President of Palau. What other country can you just show up and say “Does the Boss have a moment for us?” and actually get in?

After that they went up to Ngiwal to interview an elder we have interviewed before. This is the man who says he knows where the Japanese buried their records at the end of the war. During the interview he mentioned he also knows where a Navy Flyer is buried. That really perked up Pat’s and Paul’s ears. They queried him a bit more and asked if they could come back with the team for more questions and if he would show us where in the jungle we should go. The elder, who is now a Chief, said okay.

We all met back at the hotel, cleaned up and went out to the Thai restaurant and met up with Bert. Bert is a diving instructor and underwater photographer who has lived in Palau for 13 years. He currently lives on a boat (boasting about his brand new air conditioner that keeps his cabin at 70 degrees.) and works for Neco Marine.

Bert, as always regaled us with stories, gossip and news of Palau. It was a great night.

Now, it’s time for me to close. It’s been a slow couple of days for pictures. Sorry. As the Blogmeister says, “Shoot and shoot again. Digital photos are cheap!” Maybe tomorrow.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #12 Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-12

03 March

Today was a water day for most of us. Mark was leaving on the late night flight and wanted to get some work done so he did not go. Rick wanted a day off but ended up doing a shore dive to check out some leads near the Palauan Naval Base.

The rest of us went up north. Way up north. I had not been that far north before. We took one of Neco’s boats up past the big island of Babelthuap and half way to Kayangel. This is way past the barrier reef and into deep ocean prior to getting to another atoll. Abby, who has been spot on in the past, told Joe how to find that one coral head that had a plane on it. Abby had speared a grouper under the wing of that plane. His friend had the GPS coordinates but Abby could not get ahold of his friend in time for our trip up north. He did say that if we could not find it, he would go with us another time.

We had a beautiful ride up north with rough water for only 15 minutes. We even saw a pod of dolphins that had at least 20 members who wanted to play for a short time with the boat. We got up to the reef in about an hour and a half. We suited up and trolled for sharks. Went once around the first target coral head with no results. We shifted to another coral head and had lunch.

Back in the water and went around the second coral head. Still no luck. I did not see any man made objects other than the boat. I did see a lot of cool fish and coral. Prominent on the list were eagle rays, sting rays, puffer fish and lots and lots of colorful feeder fish. Molly saw a shark and a turtle. I picked up a handful of sand for Chris in Korea: a sand collector.

At 3 pm, we turned south and headed for home. The wind had died down so we had a beautiful ride back. We also started the task of contacting Abby so that we can get him to show us where the airplane is.

We met up with Mark and Rick at the Drop Off Restaurant where we got the news that the Internet was up and running in our room (finally!) and that Jimmie Doyle had been identified by JPAC. Although we hadn’t furthered our goals today, this news makes it sweet to be in Palau. Even sweeter, Wil, who is writing a book on Jimmie’s airplane and the entire story surrounding it, was still here in Palau to get that news.

Off to Kramer’s for all-you-can-eat spaghetti night. Mark was up to the challenge of eating three plates and getting his meal for free. After the first plate came out, the kitchen said they did not have enough spaghetti to fulfill the challenge. I think they took one look at Mark and realized they were going to lose. When Rene finally came into view he said the deal was eat three, get the fourth for free.

Mark and Warren were taken to the airport and now our group of adventurers is down to seven. Mark did a wonderful job of creating a plan to find the execution site of the POWs and the missionaries. He predicted where Japanese encampments would be and how they would be differentiated and identified. He led us from a starting point to what we firmly believe is an ending point on the stories of these men and women. Mark will create a presentation for JPAC and maybe they will see what we saw and mount an official recovery expedition.

Warren built on our culture of safety by creating a checklist for us to use from here on out. He hacked his way through the jungle and the water every day we were out there. He has orders for his next duty station with the Marines and he will be back in the cockpit of an F/A-18 before you can say Fox Two. (Do they actually say that anymore?)

And that’s what I have to say about today. I hope all is well with you. Take care and more is coming at you.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #11 Monday, March 2, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-11

02 March

Police Hill GPS/Vince’s finds.

It finally happened. The Internet was turned on in our room. After a long time trying to make this happen, it’s happened. They had to run a new phone line in, through an air conditioning unit, over three closets, the kitchen cabinets and three doors. Then they made us get a UPS before they would put the DSL box in place. Now we have lots of little lights blinking at us and I can type and send from the comforts of my bedroom.

We had some split ops today. Three of our folks went up to Police Hill one final time. In our mission scrub, we determined we needed clean GPS points. Paul, Mark and Wil went back up and finished the job. Sorry, no photos.

We went with Vince who is the historian of Airai State. A hunter told him of an airplane wreck onto of a rock island as well as one in the water at the bottom of this island. And since Vince was willing to take us, we were willing to go. The hunter was supposed to go with us but he couldn’t make. I am usually suspect of this but since Vince was going to lead us, I was willing to go. We picked up Vince and a friend of his, took a little boat ride and then took them back to the dock. Seems they needed to go get their hiking boots if they were going to come with us.

We did a little side scanning sonar searching in about 10-20 feet of water off of the island. We suck at this stuff. Then Molly, Warren and Rick went over the side to take a peek. This was Molly’s first low viz diving and she did not like it. After she got out of the water we told her it was crocodile country. She really did not like that.

Vince came back and we headed to an easy let-in point for this island. Vince is trying to build the island into an eco-tourism spot. He’s building trails past the Yap Stone Money quarry and hopes to bring tourists in to support his State. How convenient that the current steps and trail takes us some of the way in. We also had a guest with us. Jolie Liston loves us. We go hiking where no one else generally goes. We show her modern stuff and she shows us ancient stuff. She has to do a survey of this island later in the year, so going with us certainly helps her out.




We climbed up to the top of the ridge and started walking. I must tell you that climbing up steep, jagged, crumbling coral hills is not my idea of fun. I kept singing my happy song and put myself in a happy place. All this is kind of funny as I am only scared of heights when I am attached to the ground or structure. If I am flying, or when I was skydiving, it’s not a problem. I have no problems going down hill. Only up hill.






Once at the top, I could relax. We hiked along the ridge and only discovered some survey markers and a water bottle.

Vince isn’t happy with his hunter friend so he is going to call him and get some better information for us.















03 March

Stone Money was used as dowrys on Yap. The only problem was Yap did not have the stone to make Stone Money. So they came to Palau and left quite an extensive village system here. They probably hiked the same ridge as we did.

This is the island we went up and that high ridge is the one we hiked.

Out to dinner at The Taj which has been great over the years and is rapidly becoming our favorite team dining spot. A few restaurants have gone out of business during the past year. Tourism is down a little and Palauans are not going out to eat as much. We’re told there are a few more establishments that are teetering on the edge.





Here’s Molly serving our flaming chicken.

That was all we did that day. Hiked our hearts out but did not see a thing. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Until then,

Blue SKies, Flip







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BentProp Supporters Update #10 Sunday, March 1, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-10

STOP THE PRESSES

Today (03 March) we got an email from Nancy and Tommy Doyle. Jimmie Doyle has been positively identified and will be coming home to Texas after all these years. We got the word as we sat down at the end of a day of searching without any results. To say this is good news is an understatement of the grandest proportions.

01 March

Hello Everyone!

I’ve gotten a little behind with my updates. Mostly due to being pooped and knowing that I would need extra time to get it out past the Internet guards here in Palau. But now I have keyboard in hand and know that with the press of a button, when I get this done, it will be on its way.

Today was our first scrub day. This is when we go over all we have done to date and compare it to our goals and plans from before we started. The vast majority of the scrub was Mark taking us through all the conclusions he has for the execution sites. It did bring us to the conclusion that we needed one more day on Police Hill to nail down GPS coordinates and site descriptions. A new tactic has evolved to take care of this. Two folks will walk into the jungle to each of the points of interest. When they take the GPS point, they will radio to a third person outside of the jungle who will act as scribe. [Because pencils are illegal in the jungle? — Blogmaster]

Mark is now tasked with writing up a report including all of the justifications for his conclusions along with any supporting documentation. And that report will go to? [The Palauan Pencil Police. Hey, it could happen. — Blogmaster]

Rick went over his SSS plan. We all thought it would be easier than it has turned out to be so far. The key to side scanning sonar is a well trained operator. We are learning the ropes. We thought we had it nailed but have come to the conclusion that we need more training to become more adept at this stuff. So, rather than think of the rest of our days as searching with SSS, we are training with SSS. The more we do, the better we will become. And if we happen to find something along the way, even better.

Then we found out that Abbie was available to chat with us. He has given Pat three good leads in the past so we wanted to make sure we found him since he has another lead. We raced to where he keeps his boat and sure enough, he had a good lead. Seems he speared a grouper way up north and it was under the wing of an airplane in about 30 feet of water. He said he would go with us to show us but only after we tried to find it with Joe. So we made plans to do just that.

We went to Sam’s for sunset and ran into Dave and Margie of Bandidos fame. A good reunion and we met some friends of theirs. When we started to get hungry, we debated about where to eat. Everyone wanted to go to The Taj but some of us did not want to eat at all at that point. So we elected to save The Taj for the next night and just get a steak at The Palm Bistro. Everyone hopped into the vans and off we went. But not all of us. Seems that Paul drove one of the van’s to Sam’s but left with the keys to the other van still in his pocket.

Not sure which is funnier: that he did that or how long it took the other folks to figure it out. They hiked to dinner and beat the snot out of Paul. Okay, they really just gave him a hug since he doesn’t seem to like man-hugs.

And that’s that story. Hope all is well with you. More later as it happens.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Special Update Monday, March 2, 2009

Update to Field Report P-MAN IX-07

Read the above update to understand the significance of this very special update. Background info: on 1-26-04 Jennifer Powers found the B-24J 42-73453 that the team had been looking for for 10 years (it was shot down on 9-1-1944 so it took almost 59.5 years to find these men). One of the men lost in that crash was the tail gunner, S/Sgt. Jimmie Doyle. This update is from his son (and his wife) who accompanied the team the following year and dove to the wreckage of his father’s B-24 (accompanied by the President of Palau). It wasn’t safe to go into the aircraft so he dove to the tail of the aircraft to be as close to his father as possible. — Blogmaster

Monday, 3-2-09

Hi Everybody...that would be any and everyone currently, or in the past, connected with any part of the discovery or excavation and recovery of the crew of the ’453 whose email address I have...

We got it, Guys...OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION OF THE IDENTIFICATION OF JIMMIE’S REMAINS RECOVERED FROM THE ’453. Saturday we attended our 4th DoD POW/MIA Family Update in Albuquerque. Johnie Webb and Tom Holland personally gave us the notification.

We’re on the last leg of this long, long road...and it’s all because of you and many more.

Please feel free to pass on this news to anyone else whom should know.

We’ll be in touch.

We love all of you,
Nancy and Tommy


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BentProp Supporters Update #9 Saturday, February 28, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-09

Hello Everyone!

Another rip-roaring day at The BentProp Project. We think we have finished up on Police Hill and will be ready to make recommendations for official government work.

But first, lessons learned!

1. Did you know some folks do not like fried Hot & Spicy Spam?
2. Check for all pieces of the jack set before going into rough terrain. [Like they’ve ever needed a jack before. — Blogmaster]
3. You should make sure your stuff is stacked in the middle of the freight elevator.

We started the day with my world famous fried Spam. I sure ate well but some folks turned their noses up at the world’s perfect food. Can you believe that? I did have cold cereal just in case but I thought they should eat it dry for punishment.

The water team headed out a few minutes before the land team. Today, Rick took Katie and Warren out for SSS training. They found a few interesting items on the ocean floor. We are starting to get the hang of this SSS work. We’re not rock stars like the Navy but SSS will be a good tool for us going into the future.

The land team headed back out to Police Hill in Ngatpang State. We had Jolie as a guest today. She wanted to see what we’ve found and we wanted her opinion of some sites as to whether they were ancient or modern.

We showed her our jumping-off spot at the Kempetei Headquarters and then proceeded up to the executions sites. She got to see the mounds of stones that we considered graves. She found them interesting as they were not ancient but did not look modern either. Something for JPAC to consider.

Mark had predicted that a transportation unit should be close by this HQ area but across the river. We crossed the river and sure enough, there were Japanese artifacts and earthworks.

Then up to the area where the Japanese said they reburied the bones. The Japanese War Crimes Trials transcripts show that the Japanese tried to cover up their deeds by digging up the bodies, burning them and then burying the ashes. We find this suspect but if we do not track down the testimony, we’re just making guesses. However, in each of the statements of the accused, and in each hand drawn map, there is almost always an element of truth. It’s up to us to figure out what that is and find the missing burials. We showed her the execution area and she liked that too.

Molly looking down into a potential execution site.

Then we declared Police Hill a closed site, we drove up to a spot that an elder said we should enter the jungle from. He said go into the jungle here, walk an hour and you’ll be at two bunkers that hold records from the war. We’re turning Paul loose on this and do his surveyor thing and hopefully narrow this search down a bit. Although we like the elder and we actually believe him, his directions don’t narrow it down enough to make this a search from just getting exercise.

However, en route to this location, we had to take an old road that has seen better days. After the main road opened all around the island, the cross island roads have been neglected. The jungle is already starting to cover them up. We had to climb a very stony road and veer around rain washes to make sure we completed the journey. At one particularly rough patch, we heard a clang, then a whoosh. That whoosh was the air from a rear tire escaping through the side wall.

And we were in the middle of nowhere.

Not a big deal, we’ll just use the spare. Thank goodness we asked Muj to give us one. But when I went to use the jack, the jack handle was missing. The skinny little rod that actually goes into the jack was there. The piece used to turn the skinny little rod was not.

But karma was on our side: Jolie followed us. We used her lug wrench, got the spare in place and headed out again. I’ll get all the tools we need and get the tire fixed on Monday. Jolie looked around at our target area and has already started to hatch a plan. Which after all was the whole idea of our being on that road.

We parted ways with Jolie once we got to the main road. Called our fellow teamies and decided to meet at Sam’s for sunset. Or least what was left of sunset. Changing the tire burned up a little time. We had a rousing good time with lots of stories and current events from home.

Back at the casa, everyone got their laundry back today ... but me. At least that’s what I thought since I could not find mine at the front desk or in my room. The front desk crew said my laundry basket came back and that someone put it in the elevator. I went to each of my teamies’ rooms and they all remember the basket but it was nowhere to be found. Seems that when the elevator was filled with our stuff, one bag of laundry, plus basket, fell into the machinery and jammed it. Now a few of my items are being personally cleaned by the hotel staff. I think one pair of jungle pants made its way to pants heaven. But the story unfolded very slowly as I searched up and down the hotel for my laundry.

I’ll add some photos to yesterday’s update and today’s and hopefully get these underway to you.

I hope all is well. Take care.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #8 Thursday, February 26, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-08

Hello Everyone!

Unfortunately, I am writing this two days after the fact. I had fully intended to write yesterday at the end of our day off. But at 8 pm, I decided to rest my eyes for a few minutes. My hand had been floating all over the keyboard and I thought a short nap would solve that. When I opened by eyes again it was 3am, I decided I would call it a night.

On the 26th, we did a split op day. I joined the water team along with Molly and our team leader Rick. We still had the Navy with us, Mariano Lorde, who would continue our SSS training. A couple of Navy guys went on the land team but Mariano wanted to make sure we got up to speed with the gear. And, of course, we had our guest boat captain, Asa.

We made sure of all the SSS gear was hooked up and running and then we pushed off from the dock. We were going to search the same area they did the day prior but at a different angle. One of the lessons of SSS is that finding stuff isn’t as easy as just looking at a television screen and saying “There it is!” You need to make a number of runs over your target area (and we have a large target area) so you can narrow it down on the SSS scope (where you want to splash in). And it isn’t easy just saying, “There it is on the screen, let’s swim to it.” It takes a bit of effort to actually locate a SSS target visually (after you dive down).

So Rick took the first turn at the screen with me and Molly looking over his shoulder trying to learn. The best way to learn is to get screen time so I went next ... and the lightbulb went on. Last year when I was looking over Rich Wills’ shoulder (JPAC SSS guru) I felt like I was flunking an Rorschach inkblot test. Badly. But this year, applying some aviation and avionic analogies, the screen made sense.

Each of us got to call out suspect targets. The unit we’re using has the ability to make a screenshot of what we are looking at, create a geographic waypoint off of GPS and display it for review at a later time. We created a number of waypoints and gave each a description of what we saw, not necessarily what it actually is. Sort of like looking at clouds. I called out a B-52 and a DC-3 forward fuselage because that was what it looked like on the screenshot. [See “flunking badly” above. — Blogmaster] I think we also found a screwdriver and wrench, running man and certainly NSJ (non specific junk).

Towards the end of the day we moved to shallow water and did SSS work as well as trolling for sharks. Trolling for sharks is when we put lines over the side and let divers be towed by the boat. For shallow visual searches, you can cover a lot of ground this way in a short period of time. Unfortunately on that day, visibility was down so we would lose the bottom at about 25-30 feet. But we did find junk. Just not airplane junk.

It was a long day and we ended at about 4pm, but we did find what we think are two ships, one that might be a new find. Hopefully, we’ll dive it this year and confirm it. If it is, and if it is in good shape, Palau might have another tourist dive site.

Meanwhile, back on land, Mark led everyone back to the execution area. He had two of the Navy divers with him who wanted to see what we do on land. They got a bit of a tour of what we accomplished already and then they all went back to “Area A.” With more time spent in the area, they feel pretty confident that they may have found the hole that Charlie Smith was executed in. Charlie Smith was a British national, married to a Palauan. He was accused by the Japanese of being a spy and was killed. However, from the War Crimes Trials, the American POWs and the Missionaries were killed nearby. So Charlie Smith not only is a victim, he’s a signpost.

We made a presentation two years ago to Rich Wills, from JPAC, that they should scrape an area we found that we thought might be that execution site. We only had a few bits of data from the War Crimes Trials and this area seemed to fit, somewhat. Mark and Katie uncovered a lot more source data and Mark worked for a couple of years on his theory of where the executions took place. What we have seen on the ground matches his theory. We are going to have Mark prepare a presentation to give to JPAC that this is the area to investigate officially.

The land team and the water team met up at the Palm Bistro for a debrief and then went to The Taj for dinner with the Navy Divers. We whooped it up with them as it was their last night in port. The USNS Safeguard was pulling out the next day and taking the Divers with her. Their tour is coming to a close and the next company of divers is making its way out to meet the ship. But we wanted to thank the divers for all of their help, as well and thank them for the service to our country. Dinner was on us.




27 February

A day off! Well, sort of. We hiked just as far and over some rough terrain, but it was as tourists rather than searchers. All the new folks were going to mutiny if we did not take in a day trip to Peleliu. So we arranged with Tangie, the go-to guy on Peleliu, for the grand tour.

Peleliu was the big battle for the Marines in this island chain. It was supposed to be a 3-day battle after the air and sea bombardment. It lasted months and the last armed Japanese soldier came out of the caves two years AFTER the war ended. There are great books about the battle and it is worth it to delve into not only the tactics that were employed by both sides, but also the politics of the battle.

Tangie picked us up in his bus and off we went. We visited all of the tourist locations: 1,000-man cave, pillboxes, Army and Marine memorials, the cemetery (all internees were removed long ago and moved to the Philippines and Hawaii), Orange Beach, White Beach, Amber Beach and much more. Then we got out and started hiking where not only have we found an airplane crash site that held MIAs, but where some of the fiercest fighting took place: Wildcat Bowl, China Wall, Death Valley, Pope’s Ridge and more. We revisited some of the airplane parts that led us to a TBM Avenger that we identified (in 2002) as having MIAs in it. JPAC has since scraped the area and has been doing analysis ever since.

Warren saluting his fellow Marines. He’s showing the flag on the intersection of the runways on Peleliu, with Bloody Nose Ridge at the end of the run way.

We scampered in some caves. However, most of the caves that are open to the public have very little in them. Most of the cool caves have been sealed off so we won’t ever get to explore them. Every once in awhile, someone violates Palauan and U.S. law and opens a cave without permission to explore and/or pilfer. That’s not the BentProp way so we stick to the open caves.

We had lunch at Dolphin Bay Resort. This is a beautiful bungalow-style resort with a great scuba diving owner, Godwin. He and his wife have built up a wonderful place to get away from it all. The island really has very little to do other than touring the battlefields and scuba diving/snorkeling. For $65.00/night you won’t get Internet, TV or phones, but if you want to get away from it all and listen to the sound of the waves gently rolling in across the reefs, this is the place to be.

We got a little delayed leaving the island and we realized it when Josie from Neco Marine called us (cell phones work at the northern edge of the island) and said we were supposed to be back at 5 pm which was now. So we hopped into the boat and made a quick getaway. By the time we got to Neco’s dock, it was night. I wasn’t concerned about navigating in the dark around all these sharp coral islands. We have Joe and Joe uses JPS: Joe Positioning System. I had never come into Malakal Harbor at night and it was beautifully lit.

A quick dinner at the Drop Off and back to the casa to prep for the next day and write something about the last two. And as you know, I promptly went to sleep.


So now it’s the morning of the 28th.

We’re heading up to Police Hill one more time to show Jolie some ancient stuff we’ve found and to really nail down our “Area A” as the execution site. Our water team is doing more SSS sweeps. In fact, as I finish this up, Paul and Rick are laying out the lat/long points for our searches. Which means I need to get into the kitchen and make breakfast for all of us. Today is going to be special: granola and fried spam! Can it get any better than this???!!!!!

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #7 Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-07

Hello Everyone!

We had another split ops day. The water team went out and did some more side scanning sonar work. With help from The Navy, they have improved their skills and product. Tomorrow we’ll swap out a few people and they will get some guidance from Rick, who heads our water team, and from our Navy Diver friends.

The water team found a ship, already known and found another ship which might not be known. As they found out, finding a ship by SSS is one thing, actually getting to see it another. The current was strong and they could not dive down to it today. To actually take a peek, might require another day of diving.

They also found some junk in the water that was N.S.J.: non specific junk. However, it might lie in the flight path of an Avenger we have been looking for. This will be a good target site for sweeps to see if we can discern any aircraft parts.

The land team went out to Police Hill and looked at areas “C”, “D” and a new one, “E.” “C” and “D“ had very little to show us so those two alternate execution sites have been eliminated. Area “E“ is the possible site of the Sumida Unit Dispensary. The Sumida Unit was a transportation company and their first-aid area was mentioned in the War Crimes Trials. We thought that if we could find that area it would help solidify Mark’s theory about the execution site or at least the path the POWs traveled to the execution. All we can really say is that there were Japanese military living in this particular woods. Nothing very helpful was found in there.

After we got out of the woods, we hiked back to the van and headed north. I decided to take the new folks out to an area where we thought the executions had taken place. We felt so good about it we made a presentation to JPAC. Well, Mark’s theory is much better but I thought a look at the old site would be a good data point for everyone. Joe and I showed them the Japanese concrete bunkers. We also showed them the ancient Palauan artifacts that Jolie taught us about a few years ago. Then we ran out of water in our backpacks, so we went home.

A quick change and a few of us went on a grocery run. Nine folks sure do eat a lot. When we got back we had a good debrief. Then out for a quick dinner and now it’s off to bed. We are all whipped today. Our exertions are catching up to everyone. So a good night’s sleep is just the thing.

I hope all is well with you. More later. And more pictures too. I really did not shoot much today. But here are a couple I did take.

Molly finds her first stuff. Insulators...

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #6 Monday, February 23, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-06

Hello Everyone!

First off, Lessons Learned.

1. People lose stuff at the most inopportune times.
2. Capers do taste good.
3. Navy Divers are the best.
4. A plan IS just something to deviate from.

We started off the day with an egg, bacon and cheese bagel (sandwich). Yum. We got off on time and got a chance to visit the Navy Divers from MDSU on the USNS Safeguard. This is a salvage ship that plies the waters out here doing good work around the region.

The Divers have a full dive locker on board including a decompression chamber. They showed us around and showed off their find in the water: two huge anchors and lots of chain. This was a mooring system for a really big ship. The anchors were cast in 1934 and probably were put in place prior to the war. If I remember correctly, each anchor was 16,000 pounds and there was 107,000 pounds of chain. A really big ship. And it is known the Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, was berthed here at one time.

Our tour was over and we departed. Well, except for Wil. Seems he lost his visitors badge along the way and he had to retrace his steps back to the ship to find it. Meanwhile, I took some of our group up to our work area for the day. I dropped them off and I headed to the Ngatpang State offices to pick up our permit. Unfortunately, the woman I have to see is back in Koror meeting with the Governor. So we can only hike today. No work.

I drive back to where I let my charges off and there was the other van and Rick waiting for me. Wil must have found his badge so he could leave the port area. I started to change into all of my jungle togs and Sisca, from the Ngatpang State office, comes to a stop. She had the permit, handed it over and said have a good time.

Today’s plan has been in the making for 2-3 years. Mark Swank developed a theory from the data he and Katie have been finding in the archives. His thoughts are that if we can find the Kempetei Headquarters, then we have an anchor point to trace the steps taken as reported in the war crime trials transcripts. Those steps would take us to the execution site of the airmen, frogmen and missionaries. If we’re lucky.

There was one piece of the puzzle that might really help us. There was an air raid shelter in the sketches that looked pretty solid. Maybe it was still there. We found lots of foxholes and fighting positions. We did a search pattern and Joe found a substantial-looking cave. I took a look and was struck how the shape of the dugout shelter looked like the arched air raid shelter in the diagrams we saw.

I shouted out on the radio about this but just about everyone ignored me. We climbed to the top of the hill, took a break and walked back down to the air raid shelter.

I pointed out the shape and everyone agreed that this could be the designated shelter on the map.

We decided that we had enough information to establish that this was the Kempetei HQ. Our next step was to see if on the opposite side of this valley were obvious Japanese emplacements as described in the War Crimes Trials. If Mark is right again, it validates his theory.

We had lunch down the road, hiked up to the top of the ridge and down into the forest we went. And there were, as Mark predicted, the Japanese emplacements. Mark’s concept is validated. Our next step is to look at his alternate areas and either eliminate them as possibilities or add them into the fray for future exploration. One thing Mark was charged with before coming out to Palau was to come up with alternate theories for where the execution sites could have been.

We got off the hill well prior to sunset and went to Bem Ermii’s for our first burgers and shakes. That was dinner.

Back at the hotel, I got a note from Palau National Communications Corporation (PNCC) about Internet service. I may have some good news on that front tomorrow.

At 7 pm, Master Diver Jon Klukas from MDSU came over and gave us some training on conducting side scanning sonar searches. This is his element and he made what was going to be a large task much simpler. I don’t think it will be any less mind numbing to be going across wide swaths of ocean at 2-3 knots, but at least now we’ll be doing it much smarter. And we do like the smart person vs. strong person theorem. Especially since Jon said, “What me want to come along?”

I was going to get this out last night but I fell asleep in my chair typing. Maybe later today on our own Internet connection.

Take care. More later. This was a great day and tomorrow will be even better.


24 February 2009

Hello Everyone!

It is the next day. Today is our first day of split operations. In the history of BentProp, it is rare for us to split the group and do different things. However, this year we planned on doing split ops. We have sufficient numbers of people, and we have different interests. It also allows us to essentially do four weeks of work in three. But it is new for us [old hands].

Rick, Paul and Wil went out to do Side Scanning Sonar (SSS) work. Pat, Mark, Warren, Katie and Molly went up to Police Hill to work on the alternate areas for the executions. I stayed behind to deal with admin stuff.

We should have our own Internet tomorrow. The PNCC has given us a significant discount for DSL service. Normally for the speed of service we’re getting it would be around $1000.00 including installation and startup fees. We are getting it for less than half of that. They have our money and have signed paperwork. It was pretty stormy today so maybe they just couldn’t do it. Safety first.

Then I got us a cell phone, paid the insurance policy, sent out Update #5, checked on packages for Rick (he still is looking for his scuba gear) and did a few more odds and ends that needed to be accomplished for the team. Then I headed out to join the land team prior to lunch.

The water team left early and went out with the Navy divers. They came back to the dock late in the afternoon just a few minutes after we got there and they were stoked. They did run into bad weather: storms, rain and wind. Just like we did up on land. Except we did not get as much wind. They motored on and got great training on SSS. They dove on one contact and it was just too murky at the bottom and decided not to dive on any more. But they got some good solid contacts.

They also nixed the first boat assigned and got a better boat with a better cover. So we’re all set for the next SSS day which will be tomorrow. That will be Rick, Paul and Pat’s operation.

Up on the hill, our intrepid explorers searched our “B south” area for possible executions. I joined them just about at lunch time. When I entered the jungle, it was dark. And raining. Then they stopped for lunch and for the first time that I can ever remember, I had a peanut butter sandwich. Yes, I guess it did taste a little like peanuts but I kinda thought it was more like tofu. I suppose with jelly it might get more interesting. But, at least I did not go hungry.

After lunch we hit area “B north.” We found what appeared to be ancient burial mounds. But neither in “B south” or “B north” did we find the kind of Japanese emplacements as we found in area “A.” So far, Mark’s theory is holding water. At least as far as what we are finding on the ground.

The burial mounds are stone piles, similar to ones we’ve seen with Jolie before. The sites are missing some telltale signs of ancient Palauan burials, but don’t look modern either. Well, that’s why Jolie loves us. We bring her stuff. We did get to chat with her today and she’ll be heading out with us tomorrow so we can show her.

Back to town at the end of the day for a little sashimi, fish tacos and libations at the Drop Off at Neco. Then a quick change and out to Kramer’s for all you can eat spaghetti night. We always look forward to it even though we only ever have one plate. Mark wants to challenge the house next week. If you eat 3 plates, they pay your bill. So the battle is on.

Now I’m writing to you. I hope you all are having a great day. We certainly did and I can feel it building. Take care.


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BentProp Supporters Update #5 Sunday, February 22, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-05

Hello Everyone!

Today was a water day. And a good water day it was. But first, Lessons Learned!

1. If the new folks don’t know what the old hands know, it’s the old hands’ issue.
2. If you lose your towel or weights overboard, you should fess up early.
3. Our criteria for acceptable Internet quality is anything above abysmal.
4. Even Navy Internet is slow. Somehow the local ISPs are sucking up their bandwidth too.
5. If you want to start early the next morning, don’t go out to dinner in public.

Today was our get-back-in-the-saddle water day. We have our full complement of folks and we have our water ops leader, Rick. Breakfast was early and, since it was Sunday, it was pancake day. Now that I’ve gotten the hang of the burners on the stove, I’ll add blueberries next week to the pancake mix and invite Dave and Margie (of Bandidos fame).

We started the day early as we wanted to make sure we did not leave anything out, or anything behind, when we left the hotel. Rick ran the safety brief and then we headed out. Got our stuff onto the boat, ran another check and then headed to The Helmet wreck. A boat ride of just under five minutes from Neco Marine. You can see the location from the dock. If you’ve been following our field reports for the past few years you might remember that this was Tommy Doyle’s first ocean scuba dive and his second was on his Dad’s B-24.

The Helmet is one of the only sunken ships not salvaged by the Japanese after the war. Although in the main harbor area, and in 55-110 feet of water, the ship was not found until 1984 or so. It was an armed merchant with stacks of war material, including helmets. Depth charges are also stacked on it. Still. But calling it The Depth Charge wreck isn’t quite as tourist friendly. Mark would be staying on the boat as he did not get scuba qualed prior to our trip. He had mask, fins and snorkel with him but for this site, all you see from the surface is sea monsters.

The visibility is not great but it is a good warm up dive to see different depths and large chunks of metal. It also allows us to see who takes our admonishments to heart: don’t touch the things that go BOOM!

We all got off The Helmet with all our fingers intact. We headed to a spot where Esther, Joe’s wife, said she saw some wreckage. It was shallow so we just paddled around with mask and snorkels. We did find some wreckage but it was from a boat. Maybe a Dihatsu inshore boat.

Paul telling me something...

Wil just hangin’, Mollie taking a GPS reading.

Then we headed to the B-24 #453. Watching Joe navigate is amazing. With only his eyes, and his knowledge of coral heads and the shoreline, he always finds the places we want to go to. When he told me to drop anchor, we were directly over the nose of the B-24.

The B-24 is a protected site in Palau and as such required us to get Presidential permission to dive it. We also had some guests with us. The Civic Action Team (CAT) joined us and it was great to be able to show some of today’s Air Force what their brethren went through before them.

We dropped down onto the nose and I immediately found a beach towel in the wreckage. And then a two pound weight. Both looked amazingly clean. That must mean someone has been diving OUR site. I took the items along with me for investigation back on the boat.

For those that do not remember, this B-24, #453, broke in half on impact and lays on opposite sides of a coral head. It’s a small swim counter-clockwise to get to the tail section of the airplane. After a few minutes, I grabbed Katie and Paul and we headed out so we could have the tail to ourselves for a few minutes. Paul wanted to get a picture of us holding up a POW/MIA flag. I got to the tail and turned to show them that we were here ... but they were gone. Seems I might have been a little too aggressive in my speed and I left them in my dust. Great dive buddy I am.

The tail section still has a beautiful, but deadly, lionfish living near the top of the wreck. And my feeling is that there was a lot more fish life hanging out in the wreck itself.

With the CAT team and us, there were 16 people in the water. And now they were all on the tail. So I told my buddies that I was leaving and I went for some quiet time at the nose section.

Up to the surface and I showed everyone on the boat the items I found on the wreck. Finding a clean towel and a weight is suspicious but no one said anything about it. Well of course you know what really happened. Seems one of our folks dropped his towel overboard and did not tell me when I brought the towel back onto the boat and the weight belonged to another team member who did not tell me this until we were at dinner.

We finished the B-24 dive and said goodbye to our CAT team friends. A bit of lunch, a rain squall and some high winds made our surface time more enjoyable.

Over to The Jake to finish off the air in our tanks. The Jake is a Japanese float plane that is in really good condition, sitting on the bottom. 6 of us decided to burn up the rest of our air so we plopped over the side for one more quick dive.

A few pictures were taken and then it was back on the boat.

Out to dinner for some poke and salad. Of course we ran into the Officer In Charge (OIC) of the Navy divers and The Master Chief Diver. They have set up a tour, for us, of the salvage ship and the enormous anchors they just pulled up. It will start at 0830. We had wanted to be on the road by 0730 but as is always the case with BentProp, Semper Gumby: Forever Flexible.

Now it’s time to call it a night.

Hope all is well with you. More later as it happens.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #4 Friday, February 20, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-04

Hello Everyone!

Today we got to a start on time. But first, a public service announcement. Paul says “Hi!” to his wife. The Internet out here is limited at best and we still do not have a connection in the room. Paul says he’s doing just fine. Back to our story.

Paul looking like an explorer.

Paul and Pat looking at Airai.

Vince humoring us.

After breakfast, we hit the road. Went to Airai to interview Vince Blaiyok. He showed us some parts of airplanes last year. This year he told us of stories the elders spoke about. There is a plane with a “painted lady” on it in the channel off of Airai. It’s pretty silty in the channel, at least when we’ve been there, however, Vince says it does clear under certain circumstances. That’s when we’ll take a look. He also told us about a recent find a coconut crab hunter found. An airplane on top of a rock island. So, we do have some new things to prosecute.

I really was a vistor to the Koror Capitol.

We drove back to town and stopped at Koror State offices and got our permit for all of our work in the Rock Islands.

Back to the room and worked on permits for Ngatpang. We tried to fax the permit to them but, due to scheduled power outages, Ngatpang’s office was power-free so the fax machine was inop. The only way to get it there was to hand deliver. How convenient, we wanted to look at Ngatpang Hill a bit.

Looking over Ngatpang Bay.

Ngatpang Bay.

We delivered the permit request and then headed to the Hill. Pat said we’ll just walk the ridge road a bit. I should have known better. Pat wanted Mark, our land ops leader, to get the lay of the land. I headed out in shorts and sandals just so I could get some photos of the team.

After a few hundred yards, down into the jungle Pat went. And a rain storm started. And my sandals and attire were not quite what I really needed. So I returned to the car, with Katie as my buddy for safety purposes, got into appropriate togs and headed back out. Got to the top of the hill and radioed to the team to see where they were. Just heading into the jungle is just exercise if you don’t have a plan. The response was, turn left and we’re in the jungle. Okay, not really precise. So we waited on the road and the team came back. We headed down the hill and back home.

Stopped for the first milkshake at the bridge Bem Ermii’s. Hmmmmm, mocha. Headed home, cleaned up, debriefed, out to dinner and sent some folks to pick up Rick, our last team member to arrive.

No Rick. He wasn’t on the Continental flight. Well, we’ll check e-mail and find out what happened to him. However, I could not get any e-mails into my computer. The meter said 0 kbs/s were coming in. For a long time. I looked around at the other cafe users and every kid had two IM windows open, downloading tunes, playing games AND texting on their cell phones. Too many people, not enough bandwidth. So to bed I went.


Now it’s Saturday the 21st.

This morning at breakfast, there was Rick. Seems his itinerary wasn’t what even he thought it was. He arrived at 0430 on China Air via Taipei. Seems his travel agent didn’t give him his itinerary until late in the game and the 18 hour layover in Taipei was hidden from him. But at least we now know there is a new airline in town.

And now we’re getting our full mission briefs out of the way.

We started with a review of all the pertinent records that Mark, Katie and everyone else have found and analyzed. Mark gave us a blow-by-blow of how he came to his conclusions. It took a long time. But a good long time. Then he presented his mission plan for the ground ops for this year’s time in Palau. He has put a few years of thought into his plan and it shows.

We have a chance to find the burial site of the executed airmen, frogmen and missionaries. However, that will happen on Monday. The briefing was so thorough that we do not have time to go up on the hill today. And tomorrow, Sunday, we’ll be in the water. So we’ll just have to bite our tongues.

We now have a chunk of free time. Some folks are going to Neco Marine to check in and stow their gear. Others are making a food and water run. I’m at the Internet Lounge across the street watching every little byte slowly cross through the network wire. Honestly, a 4kb message took two minutes to load. I’m sorry but as much as I like all of you, large size file photos may just have to wait until after the mission is over. And then the power went out on the island.

The electrical infrastructure in Palau is being overloaded. The islands are being forced to have scheduled black and brown outs so that everyone can have some power every day. The power station for Babelthuap and Koror cannot power both at the same time. So, after 20 minutes, the power came back. Maybe I can get some e-mail in and out as all the kids left. No patience. Ok, back in a flash.

So I had ripping Internet for 15 minutes. Then everyone came back online and I’m down to 0-15 kbs/sec. Mostly 0-1. So, at least I checked and now I can breath a little easier.

We had sunset at the PPR. Probably the prettiest place for sunset that is easily accessible.

If you don’t bring your significant other here for sunset, I’m telling.

That’s it for our story. We’re going diving tomorrow and I’ll tell you about it later.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #3 Thursday, February 19, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-03

Hello Everyone!

I have a confession. But please don’t tell anyone. I did an adult thing today. Instead of going diving and putting off work for the project, I elected not to get wet and did all of the things I said I would put off. I realized if I did not seek out all the permissions for permits for our work, if I did not get the Internet hooked up, if I did not track down someone from the ship in the flyer photo, all of this would be put off for another day. Which means until next week since the weekend is upon us.

So Paul went out and finished his dive certification at German Channel. Warren and Molly went out to Blue Hole and New Drop Off. They all were beaming when I got back to the hotel. I think they’re hooked. I know I’m hooked but as I said, I did a mature thing today. [I don’t know about you but this is really creeping me out. — Blogmaster]

I started the day with Joe making phone calls to various government offices for me. Paving the way, so to speak. Then I went back to the hotel and made some more phone calls. In no particular order, I wanted to visit with the U.S. Embassy, the President’s Office, the Airai State Office, the Ngatpang State Office, the Koror State Office, the Palau National Communications Office, the Palau National Aviation Administration Office, the CAT Team compound (Civic Action Team, U.S. Air Force currently), buy gas, send an update, stop at the Conservation Office, connect to the Internet somewhere and finally contact someone on the U.S. Navy ship in the harbor.

I managed to visit every office except the Conservation group. Every permit we need is started. I drove from the harbor to the Capitol and back. Managed to update my Palauan pilot’s license, have a bowl of udong, personally clog up the Internet pipe to a crawl and meet a lot of helpful and nice Palauan Government employees. We’ll finish up the permit process tomorrow and Monday, we should have some Internet service in the room by the same timeframe and we might be conducting some get togethers with some Navy DIvers.

As you know, things happen around the BentProp Project that are just too coincidental to be a coincidence. There is a U.S. Navy salvage vessel in the harbor. I heard they’re here for training and they pulled up an old and very heavy anchor. We can see them work from the windows of our hotel rooms. The ship and team are here for a bit longer. Now what are the odds that I would know anyone on this particular ship? If you’ve followed our story, you know the answer is 100%. As it turns out, almost all of the Navy Divers on board have worked on the B-24 recovery operation and the Chief Warrant Officer in charge is a good friend of The BentProp Project. We’ll have lots to talk about. What were the chances of this vessel with this crew being in Palau at that exact time we are? And what are the chances that we’ll run into them tonight?

We’re heading to the airport to pick up Pat, Mark, Katie and Wil.

Rick will come in tomorrow night. Tomorrow we’ll do more meet and greets starting with breakfast at 0730 and our first interview at 0900. We’ll work on the permits and get people acclimated a bit to this time zone. Personally I’m in time zone hell. I woke up at 0215 this morning and have been going ever since.

I did find out that my great iPhone burns up airtime at $5.00 per minute for all calls local and long distance and texting is expensive too. So that’s been turned off. I think we’ll have a local Palauan phone shortly, courtesy of Jolie.

Our first interview will be tomorrow with Vince, the historian from Airai. He showed us some parts last year and he knows where there are a couple of airplanes in the water and on a small rock island. Now it gets interesting.

I hope all is well with you. More later as it develops.

Blue SKies, Flip

P.S. It got more interesting. Molly and Warren took one of the vans to get some Red Rooster beer as a welcome to our arrivals. They couldn’t find any. So, just to create a new tradition, we went back to Kraemers just to have one Red Rooster for the new arrivals. So who was there? A bunch of the Navy Divers including their Master Diver. And more coincidences; Wil Hylton knows all of them from his writing work on the B-24. It was old home week for most, and let’s meet you for the rest.

We have an invitation to the ship for a tour and looks like we’ll take advantage of that in a day or so. If we had brought Red Rooster to the airport, we might not have met up with the divers quite so fast. The story just gets better and better.


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BentProp Supporters Update #2 Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-02

[Today’s images are horrible. Because of the Net connection problems and the less-than dial-up speed he was getting they were grabbed from a PDF and upsized. I should get better versions later in the week. — Blogmaster]

Hello Everyone!

My travel to Palau went just as planned, with just a little scare in Guam. I flew Detroit to Tokyo and did not get a wink of sleep. I spent the night in Tokyo. I stayed up as long as I could and at 9 pm, I crashed hard. I thought for sure with no sleep that I would wake up at a reasonable time. At the crack of 2 am, I was up.

Now, with a new day and very little sleep, I flew to Guam. In Guam I found out that my flight to Palau was weight restricted and they would block 18 seats. One of those was mine. So I spent some hours in the airport working my mojo [That’s legal on Guam. — Blogmaster] and e-mailing to Molly the list of things I would not be able to accomplish that needed to be done for the team.

At the last minute, the numbers worked out and they put me on. All those wasted trons flowing through cyberspace. I feel so un-green. Once I was onboard, Paul and Warren showed up. They had taken the flight from Honolulu which only gets to Guam with 45 minutes or so to spare.

A quick stop in Yap and we arrived early in Palau. We were met at the airport by Joe, Esther and their son Quint. Great to see Joe and Esther again. I really am back in Palau. However, I had been up for a lot of hours without much sleep since Detroit so I forgot to pull out my camera and take some pictures.

Off to the hotel, check in and immediately head to Kraemer’s for a hello Red Rooster. Molly had met us at the airport with cold bottled Red Rooster. But a fresh drawn draft sounded so good. We all stayed up late and I for one slept in until 0600. Late for me looking at past years.

Our first full day here was spent doing logistics work except for Paul, who was in class working on his scuba qual. We had breakfast at The Palm Bistro, picked up our loaner van (same one as last year), went to the grocery store, delivered our scuba gear to Neco Marine, rented a second van, turned in the first van for servicing and repairs, met with folks from the Historic Preservation Office (along with Jolie Liston who is our personal guide to all things ancient Palauan), went back to the grocery stores for vitamin O (Oreos for after diving), picked up Paul and then had sunset at Sam’s.





Dwight Alexander, Director of Bureau of Arts and Culture, with Kelly Marsh, Oral Historian. We had a great first meeting with them filling them in on what we do and how we interact with all the government offices in Palau.









Warren, Molly and Jolie. Jolie was off island last year and missed out on all of our adventures. So this year she’s making up for what she missed the year before. She had already set up the meeting we had with the HPO and we are set to meet with Vince Bialyok on Friday. Vince is the historian from Airai who took us to some wreckage and has some stories of an airplane with a painted lady on the nose.

Ahhhhhh...

Out to dinner and then I took a nap. For an hour. Really, that was all. Now I’m typing and trying to get this out to you.

We did not get an Internet connection set up yet, that will wait until Friday. We also were unable to go to the State offices for permits. We’ll do that on Friday as well. Tomorrow, although we have things we could be doing, we all will be diving. Paul will be finishing his scuba qual and Warren, Molly and I will be getting some fun dives in.

That’s what we’ve done so far. It’s great to be back and I’m sure we’ll have something grand to tell you tomorrow.


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BentProp Supporters Update #1 Saturday, February 1, 2009

Field Report P-MAN XI-01

Hello Everyone!

One more work day and a night at home and then I am off to Palau. We have a great mission planned and we hope to give you great news during our adventure. We have a lot of new team members and a new search plan to help us find those warriors who did not make it home from the war. I hope to inform and entertain you through my updates. But first, everybody’s favorite section: Lessons Learned!

Lessons Learned (Already. Again.)

1. Don’t sign up for Facebook 5 days prior to going somewhere where bandwidth is precious and e-mail is only checked once a day at best. Who would have thought all those notes would come crashing in.
2. A bathing suit, a pair of gloves and two bandannas puts you over the 70 pound weight limit for U.S. Postal Service shipping. Okay, the 150 feet of network cable might have contributed as well.
3. Once again, I remembered a few items to put in once the bag was past San Francisco.
4. It’s a down economy and still the airplanes are full on the specific days you want to get somewhere on standby.
5. No, you cannot use that U.S. Postal Service tracking number to actually track your bag once it leaves the country.
6. You need the same amount of stuff for a three week mission as you do for a four week one.

The Players:

Pat Scannon: Team Leader, El Jefe, SMF #1, Fearless Leader. Founder of The BentProp Project. Pat has been going to Palau in search of MIAs since the early 1990s. He takes us places on our winter vacation that we may never have gotten to on our own. Pat’s job this year is to oversee the entire project like the Admiral on the bridge of a ship. He makes his wishes known and we will carry them out. This is part of our new methodology to hopefully find the hard to find warriors.






Flip Colmer: Mission Coordinator, breakfast chef, team photographer, loser of GPS, advance man. I have been going with Pat to Palau since 2002 with only one year off to recover from a skydiving injury. My job is to make sure that we have everything we need logistically so that we can go after targets both on the land and in the water. Keeping with the Navy analogy I started with Pat, I am the Air Wing Commander. Okay, an Army or Marine analogy might work better but I was in the Navy so what do I know about grunt stuff. [You have to take the ground and hold it. Period. — Blogmaster]




Mark Swank: Land Operations Leader. Mark is going to lead us on the ground this year. He’s one of our Squadron Commanders. Mark lives in Maryland and has been going to the National Archives for us for a long time. He is hot to find the executed POWs on the big island of Babelthuap. And he has a plan. Sounds like the Cylons, doesn’t it? This will be Mark’s first visit to Palau and he will only be spending two weeks of our three week mission with us. He’s a government employee so we think he’s trying to suck up to the new Boss by returning early.





Rick Smith: Water Operations Leader. Rick is going to lead us in the water this year. Rick is our other Squadron Commander. He is a technical diver from the Seattle, Washington, area. He has been going to Palau for a number of years and actually attended one of Pat’s briefings at Sam’s Tours. He made contact with us and has developed a plan on how to investigate the red circle map we have. These are marks on a map saying where the Japanese saw airplanes go down. We really need a side scanning sonar (SSS) for this and we were not planning on having one. So Rick was going to go along with us on the land mission to learn about BentProp so that one day when we were on the water, he’d be more prepared. Well, now we do have a SSS so Rick will be gainfully employed on this year’s mission.


Katie Rasdorff: Head Archive Researcher. Katie has also been working the National Archives for us. She has uncovered lots of nuggets of information when we thought we were close to exhausting what the National Archives have. She also started the Lost Patriot website which is a repository of all things archival (internal team stuff only). She will be making her first trip to Palau and is keen on finding everything that hasn’t been found. A former Marine, she’s going to keep us in line the entire time.






Molly Osborne: GPS and Google Earth Guru. This will be Molly’s first trip to Palau. She has been interested in going with us for quite some time and this is the year for her to join us. She is a Dietician by training and will keep us from consuming chunky fish ice cream. She works at a V.A. facility in Arizona, so she has had lots of contact with veterans.







Paul Schwimmer: Head Navigator. Paul’s business is finding stuff on the land and in the water. He’s a professional surveyor and he pestered me enough to warrant an interview with Pat. During the course of his intense interview, he mentioned he had a side scanning sonar. Did I mention we are getting to use one this year? Thanks Paul. Paul is an ex-Special Forces guy, hunter, fisherman and man about town. He also has a hobby dear to my heart which I did not find out about until I got this photo. If he had told me this earlier, I would not have made him interview. This is Paul’s first trip to Palau and his first task is to finish his scuba certification.



Warren Bruce: Land Safety Officieer and Provost Marshall. Warren is a current U.S. Marine F/A-18 Hornet pilot. He heard about what we were doing from Derek Abbey, another Marine who went with us two years ago. He rushed Pat and how could Pat say no to another one of our modern-day warriors who is willing to spend his time looking for the warriors from yesteryear. Warren recently completed a ground tour in Iraq and is eagerly waiting to get back into a cockpit.





Wil Hylton: Writer. Wil wrote an article about the B-24 we found a few years ago and the Doyle family. You remember them. They came out to dive the B-24 before JPAC and the Navy divers did the recovery mission. Wil’s article appeared in GQ magazine. Wil has a long writing resume and when the opportunity arose to join us he jumped at the chance. He will not only be doing research and writing, but he’s going to get his boots muddy helping us in the field and in the water. I was going to remove the red-eye from his wife’s eyes but that is a bit problematic. Somehow I think I am going to pay for using this photo. Sorry Wil, I lost the other one.


Jolie Liston: Resident Archeologist, car loaner agency and knower-of-all-things-ancient-Palauan. Jolie was the expert assigned to the Compact Road Project. This was a new road built all the way around the big island. If they came across anything that was ancient-Palauan, Jolie would tell them to move the road. When she went hiking with us, she would point out ancient Palauan artifacts that we thought were just rocks and hills. Hey! If it’s not metal, why would we know about it?





Joe Maldangesang: Boat Captain, Master Guide, betelnut tree climber, interpreter, teacher-of-all-things-Palauan, modern and ancient. No list of participants is complete without Joe. Joe has been working with BentProp for many, many years. We depend on Joe to keep us out of trouble, point us in the right direction and make sure we do not step on any toes (political or otherwise). It also makes a difference that he finds everything we are looking for.





Our methodology for P-MAN XI (Palau-Marines, Army, Navy, mission #11 for you new people) has changed significantly. In the past, after a year’s worth of headwork, Pat would layout our mission goals, tasks and targets. It has worked really well in the past and BentProp has been very successful in finding crash sites and MIAs. However, Pat recognized that all of the low hanging fruit has been plucked and the remaining MIAs will not be easy to find. We felt that maybe our last missions to Palau were on the horizon unless we got some new intel or a new way to “attack” our targets.

Two folks, of many, have made significant finds at the National Archives: Katie Rasdorff, our head researcher, and Mark Swank. They got so excited about what they found that they are both going with us this year. In fact, Mark got so excited that he drew up a plan of how to find the executed POWs. Well, if you make a plan, you better carry it out. So Mark is in charge of prosecuting our land work this year. This gives a new set of eyes, with no preconceived notions, towards the task at hand. The old hands who are going, Pat and I, might have a tendency to say, “Oh we looked over there. There’s nothing to be found.”

Rick, as I mentioned, is in charge of the water ops. Once again, Pat and I could easily say, “Oh, we looked around that coral head. There’s nothing there.” But Rick is really eager to find stuff in the water. So we asked him if he were in charge, how would he carry out this mission. He drafted a plan and we told him okay. Once again, if you’re going to create a plan, you better be prepared to carry it out.

That is our plan and as you all know, a plan is just something to deviate from.

My last thought. Winter has nothing to do with why I am going to Palau. [And if you believe that I’ve got a bridge over in Brooklyn that’s for sale ... cheap. — Blogmaster] So the next time you hear from me, I’ll be where it’s warm. I hope you stay with our story. It’s going to be a good one.

Now for a shameless marketing plug. Go to MeAndMyCaregivers and TheSeniorsGuide. These are Rebecca’s websites and you need to support her while I’m gone.

So until next time, take care and enjoy.

Blue SKies, Flip






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